All the Feels (Spoiler Alert #2)(41)

He narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously, and she huffed out a little laugh.

“I mean, yes, people could get violent sometimes. Mostly they’d just insult you, but sometimes they’d throw stuff. Once in a while, they’d throw punches too, but security could handle that.”

She sounded so damn calm about it all. Unruffled, as if that kind of abuse didn’t take a toll eventually. As if her safety didn’t matter.

“Patients would get angry because I didn’t prescribe them meds.” She raised an authoritative forefinger. “Which I couldn’t do, just to be clear. Or because I was ordering involuntary inpatient hospitalization. Or because they were drunk and impatient, and I couldn’t evaluate them until after they sobered up, and they couldn’t go home before an evaluation.”

When he stretched out his own legs, they brushed against hers, and he let them. In that moment, he needed the contact. “But that wasn’t enough to make you quit.”

“No.” She drew in a slow breath, and blew it out through her nose.

Her eyes were brighter now than the stars above could explain. She blinked hard once, twice, and he wanted to interrupt, to make her laugh, to offer his shirt as a tissue.

He didn’t. He waited and kept listening. Which, for someone like him, was harder than any other reaction would have been.

Her mouth worked, and then she kept speaking. “My job involved seeing people at their very lowest. A lot of times, the problems were beyond anything I could possibly fix. People were suicidal because they’d lost their jobs or their housing. Kids wanted to die because they were being bullied. And after the hundredth time I had to add someone to a wait list for transitional housing or shelters, the hundredth time I put a mom and baby back out on the streets because I had no other alternative, the hundredth time I sent a kid back to the same situation that caused them to self-harm in the first place …”

No wonder she was crying. Absurdly, he was swallowing back tears too.

“It’s hard, Alex.” She knuckled away the wetness beneath her eyes. “It’s really hard.”

He couldn’t imagine. Frankly, he didn’t want to imagine.

“Even inpatient hospitalization …” Her hands curled into fists on the stone bench. “There can be ugly power dynamics there. But when you’re trying to keep someone alive, inpatient hospitalization might be the only reasonable solution. Too many times, there are just no good options. None.”

After that, the silence stretched into minutes, and he realized she was done.

“You burned out,” he finally said.

She inclined her head. “I burned out.”

“So you took work from your asshat cousin because you had no job and needed money.”

“Well …” As she considered that, her face scrunched adorably. “Yes and no. I have savings from all my overtime, so no matter what, I could have afforded a few weeks of rest before deciding what to do next. But this job buys me more time. And I figured nothing could be farther from the emergency room than a Hollywood production and a Hollywood star’s estate. I needed some distance, and I’m getting it.”

He shifted uncomfortably on the steps, shoulders tight with something that, unfortunately, felt very much like guilt. “But you’re not resting. You’re still working.”

Right now, for instance, she should be sleeping, and she wasn’t. Because of him.

She huffed out a quiet laugh. “This is as much rest as I’ve gotten in over a decade.”

“You need some time off.” He scowled at her. “Actual time to yourself.”

But she was supposed to be watching over him all the time, and Lauren never shirked her responsibilities. Short of vowing to stay inside the bounds of his property for several days in a row—something he didn’t think he could actually do, which she would know all too well—how could he possibly get her some much-needed time off?

“Ron could assign me a substitute minder for a week or two.” However smelly and horrible that Understudy Nanny might be. “We can tell him you’re sick or something.”

Her voice was resolute. “I’m not lying, and I’m not subjecting you to whatever my cousin’s Plan B might be.”

The damn woman wouldn’t even let him do a favor for her.

Lauren Clegg might well be the most frustrating human being on the face of this planet, and coming from him, that was a fucking indictment.

“I could promise to stay inside for a few days.” Desperate times, etc. “Six. Or five? Definitely four.”

She just rolled her eyes at that, which … okay. Fair. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

“Nope.” He drummed his fingers against the steps. “What if I vow on the grave of my imaginary childhood friend, Captain Fluffytail, to immediately crush underfoot every flicker of enjoyment I might exp—”

“Wait,” she interrupted. “We’re scheduled to visit Marcus and his partner in San Francisco next weekend, right?”

His virtual PA had bought the plane tickets and arranged for the hotel and transportation earlier that day, in fact. He nodded.

“Ron considers Marcus a good influence on you.” Her brows were drawn in thought. “If you’re absolutely determined to get me a couple of days off, I’ll ask him whether I can transfer custody of you over to your BFF for the weekend.”